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From the Ethics of the Fathers: "He [Rabbi Tarfon] used to say, it is not incumbent upon you to complete the task, but you are not exempt from undertaking it."

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Friday, January 11, 2019

"Today, we essentially have a totalitarian force in the world,
and that is these large tech companies".

As if this were not "creepy"
enough, there is another process going on that is far less transparent:
"listing" -- the order in which information appears on Google. The "list
effect" on our cognitive functioning, Epstein explains, is that we
believe that the items appearing at the top of a set of search results
-- whether the category is dog food or political candidates -- are the
most relevant, valuable or true. Google and Facebook are able, thus, to
prioritize the information we receive, while pretending to be neutral
platforms, rather than content producers exercising editorial control.
It is this pretense that exempts them from being subject to the laws
governing publishers.

"If they have this kind of power, then democracy is an
illusion... There have to be in place numerous safeguards to make sure
not only that they don't exercise these powers, but that they can't
exercise these powers. The Internet belongs to all of us. It does not
belong to Google or Facebook." — Dr. Robert Epstein, American psychology
professor; "The Creepy Line".

"Today, we essentially have a totalitarian force in the world,
and that is these large tech companies. But guess what? They didn't use
storm troopers.... We all opted in... We volunteered for this
arrangement. And we live in a world today in which these tech giants
have a level of control and an ability to manipulate us that Stalin,
Mao, Hitler and Mussolini could only have dreamed of." — Peter
Schweitzer, producer of "The Creepy Line".

"The
Creepy Line," a new documentary, reveals the way in which Google and
Facebook manipulate consumers through the collection of users' data, and
sheds light on current controversies surrounding privacy and political
bias. (Image source: thecreepyline.com/video screenshot)

A new documentary,
revealing the way in which the major technology companies Google and
Facebook manipulate consumers through the collection of users' data,
sheds light on current controversies surrounding privacy and political
bias. Called "The Creepy Line," the film argues that even the most
intelligent people among us are serving as unwitting pawns in a power
grab, enabled by mathematical algorithms, without our being aware of it.

The title of the 80-minute movie is taken from a phrase used by the former CEO of Google, Eric Schmidt, who in a 2010 interview said:

"There's what I call the 'creepy line,' and the Google
policy about a lot of these things is to get right up to the 'creepy
line' but not cross it."

Produced by investigative journalist Peter Schweizer and directed by M.A. Taylor,
the film both claims and illustrates that Google and Facebook not only
crossed that line long ago, but continue to push it further away.
Schweizer, author of the New York Times best-seller Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich, is among the prominent interviewees in the film. Others include Canadian clinical psychologist Jordan B. Peterson and American psychology professor and researcher Dr. Robert Epstein.

Peterson is best known for his widely popular YouTube videos criticizing political correctness and taking issue with the Trudeau government's passage of a bill
rendering gender identity as a prohibited ground of discrimination. His
conservative message gained him both fame and notoriety.

Epstein, formerly the editor-in-chief of Psychology Today, is the co-author of a 2015 study
titled: "The search engine manipulation effect (SEME) and its possible
impact on the outcomes of elections." Although self-described in the
film as apolitical, Epstein said that he viewed Hillary Clinton as a
more suitable candidate for president than Donald Trump in the 2016
election. Peterson and Epstein, in spite of their political differences,
are in total agreement about what they consider to be a dangerous abuse
of power on the part of the two tech giants, which, for all intents and
purposes, possess a monopoly on the digital information highway.

"Before you become too entranced with gorgeous gadgets
and mesmerizing video displays, let me remind you that information is
not knowledge, knowledge is not wisdom, and wisdom is not foresight.
Each grows out of the other, and we need them all."

It continues with a segment from NBC's "The Today Show" in 1994,
in which the hosts are asking, "What is the Internet anyway?" It is
both an amusing and a startling reminder of how far the World Wide Web
and universal home-computer usage have progressed in less than three
decades.

This progress has a "dark side," however, according to the film,
which takes viewers through a step-by-step description of the advent of
search engines and the spread of social media -- free services that,
unbeknownst to most of us, are actually costing us dearly. In fact,
asserts the film -- which shows a clip of Facebook founder and CEO Mark
Zuckerberg testifying before the US Senate and explaining that he makes
money by "running ads" -- it is we who have become the product. It is
the collection of our personal data and the dissemination of it to
companies vying for our business that make us literal targets for
advertisers.

As if this were not "creepy" enough, there is another process going
on that is far less transparent: "listing" -- the order in which
information appears on Google. The "list effect" on our cognitive
functioning, Epstein explains, is that we believe that the items
appearing at the top of a set of search results -- whether the category
is dog food or political candidates -- are the most relevant, valuable
or true. Google and Facebook are able, thus, to prioritize the
information we receive, while pretending to be neutral platforms, rather
than content producers exercising editorial control. It is this
pretense that exempts them from being subject to the laws governing publishers.

"If they have this kind of power, then democracy is an illusion," Epstein says.

"There have to be in place numerous safeguards to make sure not only that they don't exercise these powers, but that they can't exercise these powers. The Internet belongs to all of us. It does not belong to Google or Facebook."

He then warns: "The more rope we give them, the sooner we are all hanged."

Peterson suggests a different solution, that of "multiple competing
search engines and... multiple Facebooks, because at least then we'd
have a diversity of ethical conundrums, instead of this totalitarian
conundrum that we have right now."

Schweizer says that if Google and Facebook continue to edit, filter
and steer content for political purposes, they are going to have to be
"regulated every bit as much as any media company." This makes sense, he
explains, because "it essentially allows the tech companies to decide,
now that they've grown up, what they actually want to be. And it's a
choice that they should... be forced to make... and not hide behind this
fraud of legislation that gives them a free hand when they don't
deserve [one].

His summary of the situation, however, is far more ominous:

"The traditional notion of totalitarianism was resting on
the premise or the idea that a government would try to achieve total
control over your life [through] the might and muscle of government, and
to do so under compulsion. Today, we essentially have a totalitarian
force in the world, and that is these large tech companies. But guess
what? They didn't use storm troopers. They didn't use the gulag. They
didn't use the arrest of political prisoners... We all opted in... We
volunteered for this arrangement. And we live in a world today in which
these tech giants have a level of control and an ability to manipulate
us that Stalin, Mao, Hitler and Mussolini could only have dreamed of."

"The Creepy Line" premiered on September 17 in New York and September 19 in Washington. On September 21, the Capitol Forum news and analysis site reported
that the White House had prepared a two-part draft of an executive
order "to better police dominant online platforms" and "to enforce
against anticompetitive conduct when they have authority, and, if they
don't, to report concerns or issues to the Federal Trade Commission or
the Department of Justice."

Ruthie Blumis the author of "To Hell in a Handbasket: Carter, Obama, and the 'Arab Spring.'"Source: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13491/the-creepy-line Follow Middle East and Terrorism on Twitter